


The Magic of Hugs

by dragonashes



Series: Quintessence: Undertale One-shots [21]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Frisk Needs A Hug, Gen, Skin Hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 16:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10768197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: What do you do when you want nothing more than to be held, but hate being touched?In unrelated news, does anyone know how to get past a GREAT skeleton without angering his brother?





	The Magic of Hugs

Frisk listened to the rough snoring from the next room over.  She had stopped by the Snowed Inn in hopes of getting a good night’s sleep, but with all the noise it didn’t seem likely.  She felt bad, taking advantage of the bunny lady’s generosity (Frisk had counted her coins and come up short, so the nice lady let her stay the night for free) but she just...couldn’t.

Besides, every time she closed her eyes Toriel’s - Mom’s - voice rang through her head.  Tears slipped down Frisk’s cheeks, into her mouth and onto the pillow.  Why hadn’t she just  _ stayed? _  Toriel would have taken good care of her, she knew.  Toriel had - had  _ hugged _ her.

...That was half the problem, though.  Toriel was the best mom, probably in the history of  _ ever _ .  Frisk knew that she was...not the best kid.  She messed up  _ a lot. _  Her own mother had told her so, regularly.  Mama just wanted her to be  _ better, _ to fit in with the other kids.  Mama loved her, so much, but Frisk just couldn’t live up to that love.  She didn’t...didn’t want to inflict that on Toriel.  Toriel deserved a better kid, right?

The memory of warm, furry arms made Frisk shiver under the thin covers.  It wasn’t cold, not really, but Frisk felt an unsatisfying  _ itch _ when she remembered that hug.  It was like some part of her was  _ missing _ and she  _ didn’t know what _ .  Half of her had wanted to pull away, like she always did when strangers touched her (just another thing that made her such a bad kid), and the other half had wanted to melt into Toriel’s arms like a bar of chocolate and never, ever leave.

Giving up on sleep, Frisk put her shoes back on and went back downstairs.  The bunny lady frowned when she turned in the room key, but didn’t question it.  She did return Frisk’s money, though, which was nice; it was enough to buy a few Cinnamon Bunnies from the store.

Frisk winced against the sudden cold of Snowdin.  It was autumn on the surface, so she wasn’t sure how it was cold enough for snow underground.  Her sweater had been comfortable while climbing Mount Ebott, and all through the Ruins, but offered little protection against the freezing cold.

“heya, kiddo.”

_ WARMFUZZYJACKET _ , some part of her mind screamed.

Frisk agreed.  Sans’s jacket looked absurdly comfortable.  She eyed it with jealousy, then reminded herself that good kids aren’t jealous.

“uh...you okay there?”

Frisk nodded, firmly.  “Just cold.  Where can I get a jacket?”  Sans looked bewildered, like she had said something out of turn.  She blushed and looked away.  She hadn’t meant to upset him.  “S-sorry,” she whispered.

“hey, no problem, kiddo.  just thinkin’ that it’s probably a waste of money for you.  you’re gonna pass paps soon and get out of snowdin, right?  i don’t think you’ll want to carry it with you all through the underground.  the next area you’ll pass through heading for the barrier is waterfall, and that’s pretty warm.  hotland is after that, and...well...it’s pretty much the  _ polar _ opposite of our weather here.”

He winked to the side at someone (or something) unseen.  Frisk giggled into her hands.  “O-okay.  I guess I can do without.”

She pulled the ends of her sleeves over her fingers until the very tips were covered.  It stretched oddly at the shoulders, but it felt nice.  The material of her sweater was soft.  It was almost like holding someone’s hand.  She wrapped her arms around herself and grabbed both her elbows.  That was even better.

“you, uh, that cold, kiddo?”

She hadn’t realized Sans was still following her.  She hadn’t seen him move.  She shook her head, gripping her elbows tighter.

Sans sighed.  “well...if you’re sure.”

He fell into step beside her for a short ways.  It was nice having him there.  Frisk was still a little jealous of his coat, but the side of her arm that was closest to him was...warm.  Well, warm-ish.  Not as cold, at least.  It was almost like walking next to a hot potato: she could feel the vague sense of warmth radiating off of him.  She wondered if it would be weird to walk just a little closer.  He didn’t know her at all (or, at least, she  _ thought  _ he didn’t; he kept calling her ‘buddy’ and ‘pal’ and acting like they’d known each other for years) so she wasn’t sure how he’d react.

She would’ve maybe tried to hold one of his hands, but they were tucked safely into pockets on the sides of his jacket.  Frisk approved; pockets were some of her favorite things  _ ever. _  She wondered if she could bond with Sans over pockets the way she was bonding with Papyrus over spaghetti.

“welp, this is where i leave you.”

Frisk nodded, disappointed but not surprised.  Sans was a grown-up (probably; he had a job, didn’t he?  But what grown-up played pranks and told jokes and made silly unsolvable word search puzzles?) and had more important things to do than to walk around with her.  She missed the little bit of warmth.

Sans was talking about his brother and blue attacks, and Frisk nodded along.  She had the niggling feeling that she’d heard this before, but she couldn’t remember.  She tried to commit it to memory so she wouldn’t forget...again?  She nodded extra hard when Sans looked stern and did something funny with his eyes and warned her not to fight his brother.  She didn’t want to disappoint either of the skeletons; they’d both been so nice to her!

And so she did her very, very best.  She couldn’t sneak around Papyrus, even though she tried really, really hard.  It hurt when he said they couldn’t be friends because she was human.  She nearly panicked when Papyrus drew her into an encounter; Sans’s words were fresh in her mind.  Would it matter that he started the fight?  She dodged bones frantically, the skeleton’s blue magic weighing her down.  She hoped she would get a chance to explain…

On her turn, she took a moment to breathe.  A flash of blue from somewhere in the mist nearby caught her attention, but when she turned to look there was nothing there.  She wondered if Sans was watching, if he was mad at her.  She evaluated her options.

*FIGHT   ACT   ITEM   MERCY

Oh!  She smiled, relieved.  Sans had asked her not to FIGHT his brother.  Papyrus’s name wasn’t yellow, so she couldn’t SPARE him...yet.  Determination filled her as she chose to ACT instead.  She could do this!

The whole encounter was...confusing.  Papyrus’s blue magic was strange, affecting her soul directly instead of just throwing blue things at her like other monsters had.  It felt...not bad, actually.  Kind of like a hug, if one stretched the definition.  She could feel something Papyrus-like surrounding her, filled with excitement and worry and pride and sadness and joy and just a little bit of fear.  It was a little scary to have someone so close, but also reassuring that he was feeling so many of the same things Frisk herself was feeling.

He still attacked her, though.  It was amazingly controlled - not like the random storms of attacks that other monsters used - and Frisk was able to dodge without too much trouble.  She could feel Papyrus’s approval each time she jumped over a bone or dodged an attack pattern (especially the tricky ones) and his worry every time she got hit.  The patterns got more complex as she became used to the blue magic’s effect on her, and she braced herself.

Fear - pure fear - gripped her when she saw  _ something _ materialize behind Papyrus.  It was large and white, much bigger than Papyrus himself.  Whatever that non-bone attack was, it felt  _ dangerous _ .

She nearly laughed when Papyrus whirled around to look at it, looking almost as surprised as she felt, and  _ stomped his foot _ at the thing.  He spent a good minute waving his hands at it frantically, ranting about how it was ‘too dangerous for a human’ and promising to take the thing out on a walk later.  She shrugged to herself; if the guards were dogs and that one bunny in town had her little brother on a leash, she didn’t see a reason why Papyrus couldn’t take his strange attacks on walks.

The conversation was odd as well.  She had flirted with him, not really sure what else could possibly work, and to her surprise he reacted...rather well, actually.  He kept talking about a date and rubbing strange things behind his ears.  Before he realized he didn’t have ears, anyways.  Frisk dug deep into her repertoire of Flirty Things to Say (learned from her mother, the kids at school, and the TV shows she sometimes watched when no one else was home).  Papyrus basked in it like a cat in a sunbeam, so Frisk figured she was doing something right.

Papyrus’s special attack, unfortunately, was a bust.  Frisk felt bad for him; she knew the feeling of making something  _ really cool _ and having someone (or some _ thing _ ) else destroy it.  She ignored the muffled chuckles she heard somewhere behind her, gave Papyrus a smile to encourage him, and did her very best to dodge his Really Cool Regular Attack.

Then he summoned the biggest bone Frisk had ever seen in her life.  It was bigger than Papyrus’s whole body, bigger than the dinosaur bones she’d seen in the museum, bigger than the houses in town.  It looked like it went almost all the way up to the cavern ceiling!  How was she going to jump over  _ that? _

A quick glance at Papyrus showed nothing but the utmost faith in her abilities.  There wasn’t enough time to tell Papyrus that  _ humans can’t fly _ , so she jumped as high and as hard as she could…

...and felt something  _ else _ grab her soul.

It was different from Papyrus’s magic, even though when she looked down her soul was the same blue color.  This magic was cool where Papyrus was warm.  It felt old, like a dusty book that hadn’t been read for years, and tired and sad.  It felt like those days when Frisk didn’t want to get out of bed, but did anyways because she knew that laying in bed would be worse.  It nearly made her cry.

Then - her breath caught - there was a surge of something DETERMINED and protective and  _ safe _ .  Her legs strained with the urge to jump higher, higher,  _ higher; _ it didn’t make sense - there was nothing to jump off of - but it was  _ working. _  She was...flying?  She latched onto whatever it was that had wrapped itself around her, and together she and Papyrus’s magic and the new magic all flew right over the top of the bone.

It wasn’t  _ that _ big after all, she realized.  The magic let her down gently, then faded away.  Concerned by the loss she almost missed the last tiny bone Papyrus threw at her, but side-stepped it at the last moment.

Then...it was over.  Papyrus offered her MERCY, and she did the same to him.  Papyrus released his grip on her soul, too, and Frisk was relieved feel only herself again.  As cool as that was, it was an encounter she didn’t really want to repeat.

**Author's Note:**

> "Skin hunger" is common among Western cultures and others that put a huge emphasis on physical relationships. Because any touch is seen through that filter, children and teenagers too young to be in such a relationship frequently experience a lack of touch.
> 
> Human, like other mammals, require touch for mental well-being. In one study, for example, baby monkeys presented with two fake 'mothers' - one with a soft body, the other with food - will prefer the soft 'mother' over food. Other studies show that puppies raised without physical contact grow up temperamental and aggressive. No such studies have been done on human children (for obvious reasons), but it has been noted that a lack of healthy platonic touch is a factor in young girls becoming 'physical' earlier in life.
> 
> In short: Frisk needs many hugs. Since skeletons give the best hugs, I have high hopes that Frisk will quickly make up her hug deficit.
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading! Follow me for more one-shots, and an upcoming longer story that I think is (finally) almost done. It's only 4-5 times longer than it was supposed to be, and is decidedly novel-length, but it could be worse.


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